The Atheism Thread

[il Padrino Ute]

After taking this test, it appears that I am a moral relativist.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...elativist-test

Not sure what I am based on that test. I count blocks from the bottom up. Whoever came up with the test is saying that the block is both green and non-green.

[pellegrino]

Not sure what I am based on that test. I count blocks from the bottom up. Whoever came up with the test is saying that the block is both green and non-green.

you just proved you're a moral relativist.

[SeattleUte]

you just proved you're a moral relativist.

Any gun ethusiast has to be. What more proof do you need:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us...?smid=pl-share

[Clark Addison]

After taking this test, it appears that I am a moral relativist.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...elativist-test

I am not sure if I am because it was a poorly worded question.

[wuapinmon]

I disagree with the question. You cannot definitely determine anything without more information. You can suppose about probability, I suppose, but nothing can be determined definitely.

[Harry Tic]

From Zizek, as entertaining and provocative as ever: "If There is a God, Then Anything is Permitted."

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/artic...17/3478816.htm

[UtahDan]

In Mormonism whatever God commands is right. His morals and ethics are situational.

[Jacob]

In Mormonism whatever God commands is right. His morals and ethics are situational.

Disagree.

[wuapinmon]

Disagree.

Nephi and Laban?

[LA Ute]

In Mormonism whatever God commands is right. His morals and ethics are situational.

Hmmm. I disagree. First, it seems like an odd fit to judge the God of Mormonism against his "morals and ethics." Morals are "of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character." Ethics are "the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation."

I'd say that instead God governs and lives by principles, or "a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning." Morals and ethics are subordinate to, and based on, principles.

Wuap, that's how we get to "It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief." That's an application of (divine) principle to a set of facts. UD, my brother at the bar, you of all people should understand this.

[Joe Public]

Hmmm. I disagree. First, it seems like an odd fit to judge the God of Mormonism against his "morals and ethics." Morals are "of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character." Ethics are "the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation."

You are saying God is amoral, are you not?

[LA Ute]

You are saying God is amoral, are you not?

No. In our faith's conception of him he lives by eternal laws and principles. Morality flows from those principles. So in that sense he is the most moral of all beings.

[wuapinmon]

I'd say that instead God governs and lives by principles, or "a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning." Morals and ethics are subordinate to, and based on, principles.

Moral is just a term that Cicero coined to translate the Greek word for ethics into Latin. Principles, just means 'first' and 'moral' just means how you're supposed to behave in polite society. You can talk about 'principles' being the origin of truth, but you're ascribing a modern meaning to the word that it did not have when 'moral' and 'ethics' were on the lips of Paul.

So, morals, ethics, and principles, are really two sides of the same coin, with Janus being morals-ethics on the 'heads' side.

In a Kantian sense, principles are worthless if they are not universally morally applicable. Killing Laban is immoral and unethical specifically because it's trying to do the greatest good for everyone but Laban. God's imperative to spare Lehi's descendants from ignorance is subjective (especially when the designs of deity cannot be frustrated) because you shouldn't treat killing Laban as a means to an end, because Laban is also an end. When God allows someone to break a moral in the name of what you call a principle, he is viewing Laban purely as a means, and we side with God because of our moral intuition instead of our rational powers.

[SeattleUte]

From Zizek, as entertaining and provocative as ever: "If There is a God, Then Anything is Permitted."

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/artic...17/3478816.htm

My brain moves in unconventional ways. My thinking is, were it true that absent God, anything is permitted, this would confirm for me the absense of God. For in that event the empirical evidence would overwhelmingly tend to show that morality is but a pavlovian reaction in fear of a retribution from an eternal being that bears all indicia of being a product of the human imagination.

Whenever a religious person makes the last ditch argument that absent God, anything is permitted, I see a nihilist. For me, empirical evidence, however trace or hopefully or subjectively evaluated, of universal justice, that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, absent evidence of supernatural inervention, is the only thing that gives me hope there is something more to us than being here on earth. I like to think of this process as wholly natural, like a stream clarifies as it runs downhill.

Like the ancient Greek philosophers, I believe in an indestructible "good," and the tangible fruits to be had from being good, exclusively for goodness' sake, at an individual and a societal level.

This is why I love the history of the Enlightenment and the rise of the American republic, of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, of our nation's civil rights struggle.

God is irrelevant. I think religion has served a purpose in human progress. Sort of like training wheels.

This I believe.

[Sleeping in EQ]

No. In our faith's conception of him he lives by eternal laws and principles. Morality flows from those principles. So in that sense he is the most moral of all beings.

Can you please speak for yourself?